AGENCY TESTIMONY
Introduction and CUNY's commitment to addressing discrimination
0:12:00
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114 sec
Chancellor Felix Matos Rodriguez introduces himself and reaffirms CUNY's commitment to addressing discrimination and antisemitism. He emphasizes the importance of keeping CUNY campuses free from discrimination and ensuring students feel welcome and safe.
- Highlights the disturbing uptick in antisemitism facing the nation, city, and campuses
- Emphasizes CUNY's multi-pronged approach to address the growing problem of hate and intolerance
- Reaffirms the core mission of fighting against discrimination of any kind
Felix Matos Rodriguez
0:12:00
Good morning, honorable, chair Dinowitz and to the members of the community of higher ed and the other members of the city council present here today, thank you for the invitation to speak about the Littmann Report and the City University of New York's ongoing work to address hate and antisemitism.
0:12:18
My name is Felix Matos Rodriguez, and I, with my colleagues, Derek Davis, the the university's general counsel and senior vice chancellor for legal affairs, and Sasha Owen, senior vice chancellor for strategy and policy implementation, are proud to represent the CUNY system here today.
0:12:38
For five and a half years, I have had the honor of serving as a chancellor of CUNY.
0:12:43
In this capacity, I oversee a diverse university system that has a long standing legacy of facilitating socioeconomic mobility for New Yorkers no matter their background or means.
0:12:55
This mission is something that I have been deeply committed to throughout my over 2 decades of involvement with CUNY as a faculty member, center director, college president, and now as chancellor.
0:13:07
I want to reaffirm our deep commitment and critical obligation to keep our 25 campuses, 240,000 students and 40,000 employees free from discrimination of any kind to ensure our student that our students feel welcome and can learn safely and free of harassment.
0:13:29
This is core to our mission.
0:13:32
The fight against hate and intolerance is particularly important as our nation, our city, and so our campuses face a disturbing uptick in antisemitism.
0:13:44
While we know there's more work to be done, over the last few years, we have built a multi pronged approach to address this growing problem.
